


Her Again

by BlueRoboKitty



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Cute Kids, Fluff, Gen, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4531515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueRoboKitty/pseuds/BlueRoboKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robin finds himself having to deal with Batgirl when he's stuck with her for a night while she teaches him hacking techniques. And he's pretty sure she hates him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Again

Oh. It was _her_ again.

Jason Todd sighed deeply as he stood in Batcave, staring at the slender figure sitting at the computer with her eyes glued to the screens as she put another potato chip in her mouth and swung her legs back and forth. Her cowl was pushed back over shoulders, exposing her bright red hair which was tied into a pair of tiny pigtails. The blue light highlighted her freckled features, bathing her in shades of cobalt and purple.

Jason slipped as quietly as he could to the locker where he kept his Robin costume so Batgirl wouldn’t notice him. He had no idea what he had done to get on her bad side other than replace the previous guy, who had apparently been some kind of big deal to her.

Jason may not have been Dick Grayson but he could pass as Robin just fine. Okay, his hair was more of a dark chocolate than raven black. And he didn’t have gray eyes, but had one blue and one green eye that tended to draw a lot of attention. He also, apparently, could fit in the same size costume Dick wore when he was _twelve,_ which was _bull._ At least Alfred had made him his own costume since.

“Did you really just try to sneak past me, kid? You’ll have to do way better than that.”

Jason looked over his shoulder just in time to see Batgirl shake her head and return her gaze to the computer. Barbara Gordon. Of course she was the daughter of a cop.

By the time he was done changing, Batman had arrived in the Cave. “Robin,” he said when he noticed Jason.

“Ready to kick butt, boss!” Honestly, Jason wanted out of the Cave like ten minutes ago, and he really hoped Batgirl wasn’t going with them.

“Not tonight,” Batman replied. “I’ll be going on patrol, but you are to stay here with Batgirl. She’s going to teach you how to use the Bat system.”

Jason’s stomach sank all the way to his feet. “You serious?”

“Batgirl coded most of the programming. She will be a better trainer to you than I. Perhaps you can teach me a thing or two when I get back.”

Bruce’s one attempt at keeping things light, and Jason couldn’t bring himself to crack a smile. He crossed his arms over his chest in a huff as he watched the Batmobile roar into the darkness and send a flurry of terrified bats racing toward the ceiling for refuge. And then all was silent but for water dripping along the damp walls and the humming Bat system. Jason couldn’t believe it. He, the Boy Wonder, the _better_ Boy Wonder, stuck inside for the night with _Batgirl._ Learning geek crap.

This was seriously the worst day of his life.

“Are you going to stand there all night?” Batgirl called over to him.

“I’m coming,” he grumbled. He grabbed a seat from one of the unused consoles and dragged it over to her. Its legs made a harsh, grating sound against the floor. She glowered at him. He grinned back at her.

“So what do you know about computers?” she asked as he plopped down in his seat next to hers.

Begrudgingly, he explained to Barbara everything he knew which, truth be told, wasn’t all that much beyond basic usage. His dad had owned a computer, but Jason had rarely been allowed to use it and he could never figure out its password. He didn’t know bunk about codes and algorithms and programming software from scratch.

“Why _did_ Batman pick you up?” Barbara asked. Her words seemed harsh but they were softened by her inquiring tone.

Jason flushed a little all the same, a bloom of heat rising in his neck and reaching all the way to the tips of his ears. Grayson was a phenomenal acrobat and Barbara was the genius queen of nerdom. What could he possibly bring to the table, really? “I… I stole the wheels off the Batmobile and he caught me. Next thing I knew, I was carried here.”

Her eyes widened and she actually looked really impressed. Her reaction made him flush more. “That is _gutsy,”_ she remarked and then she started laughing. It was a really nice laugh, a sweet sound that made his stomach become all fluttery and weird.

“But,” she added when her laughter faded and it was back to business, “this job takes more than just guts and if you don’t start using that little brain of yours, you’re going to learn that hard way. Batman wouldn’t have chosen you if he didn’t think you had potential, so let’s see how much potential you actually have. Hey, Alfred, can you get us some snacks and sodas? We’re gonna be here a while. And we’re gonna need the caffeine.”

Turned out learning how to use the system was not nearly as boring as Jason assumed most geeky stuff would be. And he may not have had any unique skills but he was a fast learner, mastering a few basic hacking techniques after only an hour. “Remember, it’s only going to get harder from here,” Barbara reminded him. “Being able to adapt is everything.”

“Heh. You don’t have to tell me.” Being a quick study was how one survived in Gotham’s streets, a dark wasteland of grime and desperation beneath pretty lights and menacing towers. Weaving through cyberspace undetected was pretty much the same thing. Once you were caught, it was game over.

A few hours slipped by without either of them noticing as they munched on rest of Barbara's potato chips and the fresh pizza Alfred made for them. Jason found himself fascinated by how much Barbara knew, and he appreciated that she kept her explanations simple without being condescending. Apparently, she had written a lot of the software designed specifically to mimic various levels of security for random systems, and more and more he was able to bypass them without triggering anything. Batman called a few times to check in on the duo and Jason’s progress. “Pretty soon he’ll be hacking into the Batmobile,” Barbara joked.

“Looking forward to it,” he replied without the slightest hint of a smile. “Batman out.”

“I swear he’s worse than my dad,” Barbara grumbled when the communication window disappeared.

“Your dad is an emotionless droid?” Jason asked.

“Huh? What, no.” She snorted. “Bruce can get really… uh… overprotective? Smothering? Something like that. Just like my dad.”

“But the commissioner lets you be Batgirl.”

Barbara gave him a soft smile that was almost sad, and Jason felt like he had said the wrong thing. “My dad has no idea,” she said. “If he did, he’d lock me in my room and never let me out of the house again.”

Willis Todd used to lock Jason in his room, but less for his protection and more so he didn’t get plucked off the streets by Gotham’s Child Protection Services. Joke was on the old man as Jason had spent those many lonely, stuffy hours learning how to pick locks. At least the commissioner _cared_ about his kid.

“Maybe you should tell him,” Jason suggested.

“And maybe you should mind your own business, twerp,” Barbara shot back in a venomous tone that signaled he was treading on a ground filled with landmines trying to breach a sensitive subject for her.

A minute of extremely awkward silence went by, and then Barbara’s glare softened considerably. “Come on, let’s do a road test. Show me what you’ve learned.”

“We’re actually hacking into something? For real?”

“Yuuuup. This software is limited and can only predict so much. Out there, it’s your skills against the skills of another programmer, and usually one who has way more experience than you do. Don’t worry, I won’t throw you into the deep end of the pool just yet. The system we’re hacking into is a surprisingly simple one.”

Jason cracked his knuckles and began typing away. “Gotham Academy?” he asked as he started making his way through its backdoors.

“Uh huh. You should break into that, no problem.”

He did so with ease, and was actually a little proud of himself as files upon files containing all of the school’s information popped up on screen like a treasure chest breaking open and spilling forth all its riches.

“Good work, grasshopper. I’ll take it from here.”

Barbara seemed to type impossibly fast as she searched through the digital folders, proving just how much better than he was at this, and Jason watched with shameless curiosity. “Ah ha,” he heard her say and she opened a spreadsheet that contained a list of names. She grinned as she found her own name, and erased it.

“What was that about?” Jason asked.

Barbara released a long-suffering sigh. “If you _must_ know, that was a list of students who are eligible for early graduation.”

Jason stared. “Aren’t you only a sophomore?”

“The price of genius.” She shrugged. “I’m too smart for Gotham Academy so they want me gone. Actually, if I were to graduate early it makes _them_ look good like _they_ did all the work. So screw them. And I don’t want to leave my friends. I at least want my life to be normal during the day. And it’ll be a pain to be Batgirl and a college student without a car or something. I can coast for these next two years while I prepare my thesis.” She was grinning, talking more to herself than him, her green eyes blazing with ambition. “I have every intention of blowing them completely out of the water the moment I step on that campus. All of them will see. Dad will see, too.”

If they were going to be blown away like Jason was now, then it was no question that this girl was definitely a terrifying force of nature. “You’re… something…”

She giggled. “Thanks, kid. So what about you, anyway? What do you plan to do with your life?”

Ha ha, wow. Jason never really thought about it. Planning where his next meal was going to come from was about as ambitious as he got. He was in a specialty school right now, trying to catch up after having dropped out of the 6th grade. Just yesterday, the faculty told Bruce that if Jason kept his grades up, he could actually enter high school that fall, like a normal teenager on the road to getting his high school diploma, something he never thought he would be able to obtain.

“I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “I guess I could just be Robin forever.”

“You can’t be Robin forever.”

“Why? Because your boyfriend couldn’t?”

That was a low blow and he was immediately sorry. Barbara let it slide. “No, because you have to grow up sometime. Dick outgrew the Boy Wonder. You will, too.” She tilted her head at him and he noticed a grin tugging at her pink lips. “Though you probably do have a long while before that happens. You’re like twelve, right?”

Jason’s face went hot. “I – I’m _almost_ fourteen!” he sputtered. She was teasing him. He never expected she would tease him and it was embarrassing. And why did _everyone_ keep thinking he was only _twelve?_ He wasn’t _that_ small!

“Ah. I see.”

“You’re not that much older than me,” he grumbled.

“At the rate girls mature compared to boys, we may as well be _decades_ apart, small fry.”

She placed her hand on his head and ruffled his hair. People had a habit of doing that, too. But coming from her, it strangely didn’t piss him off nearly as much. He even kind of liked it.

And then she was giving him this _look,_ and he had no idea how to describe it other than complicated. As if she had a hundred emotions flashing behind her eyes.

“Hey.”

“Uh… huh?”

“You… you’re gonna do alright, twerp. Batman chose well.”

As if she realized what she was doing, Barbara snatched her hand back as if Jason’s hair suddenly went aflame. She cleared her throat and it was back to glaring at him. “But don’t let go to your head, got it? You still have huge pixie boots to fill, shrimpy. And you made a few mistakes hacking into the school. Had the system been any more secure, you would have really caused some trouble. Come on, back to work. Let’s get you further along before the Big Guy comes back.”

“Heh. Yes, ma’am.”

Jason couldn’t help grinning as he turned back to the screen. He knew it.

Batgirl _totally_ had a crush on him.


End file.
